User blog:MongoosePirate/Tales From the Deletion Logs Part 4
The Life and Legend of Bren Tenkage In this blog, MongoosePirate, a history buff with way too much time on his hands, will look over some of the more colorful content that has graced this wiki in the past ranging from impractical weapons to impractical spin-offs of canon groups. Not all of these pages were bad, but all of them were deleted for one reason or another. Let's dive in... Today, we look at a character whose time on this site was short but his shadow long. I am, of course, speaking of Bren Tenkage. The half-Asian, half-ghoul, very smart, very fit merc with a heart of gold. For about a year, Bren and his posse of companions plagued the wiki with their various weird and unexplained actions until they met a "grisly" end. But we'll get to that later. Bren Tenkage was "joined the action" on February 22, 2009, created by User:Brengarrett. Bren Tenkage was not just a Fallout Mary Sue, he was THE Fallout Mary Sue. Let's get the list: *Born in the Enclave but not part of the Enclave (Born to an white father and a Japanese mother in the Enclave, Supreme Gentleman material) *Orphaned at a young age (Parents died and was sent to Little Lamplight) *Killed a dangerous enemy as a child (Shot a deathclaw) *"Learned the Blade" (Fights with a katana against lasers and guns) *Unique hybrid/mutant (Weird "half-ghoul" variant with "ghoulish blood", initially only given immortality without drawbacks) *Weird Pet/Sidekick (Raised and tamed a Yao Guai cub named Ryo) *Posse of followers devoted to him (The Claws, their story is a whole other page in the making) *Being an Anime character in a non-Anime setting (Half Japanese mutant wielding a Katana? Need I go on?) Here's a note on Bren's character creation: Some of Bren's equipment was rather odd as well. This equipment consisted of a scapel in case of being tied up (be prepared), Death Claw Bane (will get an entry of its own someday, a bizarre combination of the deathclaw gauntlet and a Hunting Rifle), the old Art of War book (should I tell him that's Chinese?), the Dog Tags from his father, frag grenades, his PipBoy 2000 (retro), some food, ammo, smoke grenades, Flash Mines, and Knives. Bren seemed to have everything going for him at first, a steady raider girlfriend, a reliable job as a merc, sympathy for mutants, and half the wiki hating him. Well, that last part wasn't going for him, half the wiki already hated Bren when he was created for being a Mary Sue, butting into RPs, and constantly trying to bring fame to himself and the Claws. He also tended to be quite naïve and unable to understand that his "heroic" actions in RPs could have bad consequences, from randomly attacking allies in anger to working with raiders "because he needed the caps". One notable case of this was in RP:The Pitt, when Bren sympathized with a captured Super Mutant Behemoth and considering letting it "roam free". Another character in the RP was quick to tell Bren how letting a feral flesh-eating green giant out of its cage for no reason might just the worst idea ever. This brings into play another of Bren's important personality traits, his undying sympathy for the freakish, dangerous, and insane. Bren's creator, also called Bren Tenkage, contributed to his character's unpopularity. A active page author and roleplayer, Bren wanted to participate in pretty much everything on Tranquility Lane. His enthusiasm is even a little admirable at times. However, the unfortunate side-effect of Bren's eagerness was that his small posse of characters, Bren Tenkage included (not to be confused with the user Bren Tenkage), were constantly being shoehorned into other people's RPs. The most egregious example of this was when Bren and company went west to participate in a roleplay near Arroyo in "a train powered by a shaking object". Whatever that means. The character of Bren also got hopelessly mixed up with the major factions of TL at the time, the Enclave and the Crusade, and got a large bounty on his head. Bren was also rather averse to criticism, often falling back on blaming his autism for bad writing or odd behavior. A couple of months after joining the wiki, Bren had royally pissed off about everyone in the wiki, and he knew that. So he tried to make up for it by adding edge to Bren and adding more handicaps to him. Bren lost his leg and had to have it be replaced with a prosthetic. His ghoulification accelerated and soon, he was a full ghoul, which alienated his raider girlfriend Maria, leading to Bren basically getting cucked. By that time, Bren considered his character to have become a "fallen hero" and decided it was finally time for Bren to bite the big one. He did so at the hands of the most overpowered character on TL, Jacob Vaughton. Vaughton, angry at Bren for being a oblivious fool and causing wanton destruction, decapitated the hapless weeaboo ghoul and took his leg as a trophy. That is where the story of Bren the character ends, in a sense. However, the story of Bren the user was not over quite yet, even though he left the wiki after his character's death. The other users on TL were not satisfied with the fallen hero Bren, still regarding it as subpar garbage. So, after Bren the user left, the userbase of TL seized Bren the page and began to change, to improve it. The page's name was first changed to Brendan Hopkins, then to Brian Harmon. A lot of characterization was added, much of it mocking the original author. Soon enough, Bren the user returned to see what had happened to his page and was promptly filled with righteous autistic rage. He went off of everyone in TL, calling them bastards. Looking back, he wasn't completely wrong. This final fuck you from Bren was met with largest rebuttal I think ever seen on a wiki. Virtually every active user on the site turned on Bren and flamed him. Here are some choice quotes from Bren's talk page: Many more examples of people going off on Bren can be found around the wiki, unsurprisingly. More can be found here. Here's one of the harsher critiques: Soon after his last fuck you, Bren the user faded back into the annals of history, never to return. Bren the page, now called Brian Harmon (also the name of a hairy legged guy with a sock fetish apparently), did not last long after its creators absence and the TL userbase decided that it was time to eliminate all reference of Bren for the wiki once and for all. And that is what happened, Bren's page was wiped along with others and references to him and related pages were scrubbed from the wiki. And so the page was deleted. Bren Tenkage still has quite a visible online presence, with a Youtube channel, a Fanfiction.net account, and a Deviantart account to name a few, using his real name for all of them. He has moved on from Fallout and seems better for it. Next time, we ask the question, do androids dream of synth gorillas... Category:Tales From the Deletion Logs Category:Blog posts